Good read on Making Money from Developing iPhone Apps

Making Money from Developing iPhone Apps

by Bill Snyder, Infoworld on Jan. 15, 2009

Making Money from Developing iPhone Apps is an interesting read from PCWorld about how expert and experienced entrepreneurs have attempted to and apparently have not yet succeeded in developing a profitable business model around apps on the iPhone.

Summary:

Pros:

• Yes, the iPhone is very cool and many people enjoy playing with it.
• There are tens of millions of users and they are able to easily buy your app from the AppStore
  

Limitations:

• There are ONLY tens of millions of users versus the billions of mobile users around the world.
• There are still limits to the iPhone platform ("the iPhone application environment is very difficult") and you rely solely on Apple to fix them, example given in this article is the inability to run multiple apps.

Conclusions of Author:

• You need a critical mass of users -- but you can't get there if the iPhone is your only platform.
• Location-specific apps have to be very location-specific, or you risk the wrath of users.
• Market your butt off.
• You're going to make enemies.